First of all I'd like to express my sincere gratitude to Mr. Abinandhan Ramanujam for such a great cinematography.
Amen as it claims itself, is a divine comedy, directed by Lijo Jose Pallissery. The primary objective of the films which comes under this art-movement called "magical realism" is to create an illusion to the viewer despite the existence of some supernatural being or something bizarre to be blended with. Spontaneously the user would hesitate to think that the visual clusters are purely hypothetical. In spite of fabricating the VIRTUAL REALITY to end-user, the director could emphasize the same chunk of conditions in the story-plot as well as makeup aspects. It could extrapolate an extraordinary time-period of Kerala that I guessed it might be around 1980's.
Even though the script was dull at the beginning, audience forgot to notice it because of the consistent sitcom. Regarding the essence of comedy throughout this movie, is inherently related to the culture of Kerala especially the middle-aged Christian culture. So I presume, even if some non-native people of Kerala try to see it with subtitles it's not going to hit at the comical point that's supposed to be. Apparently audience adopted the situation comedies as in dialog as well as in trace movements of camera like zooming and panning which was captured with a mediocre high definition camera and was often shown it in extremely slow motion. I've seen a lot of internet-memes of this movie in social media networking sites so far.
Peculiar twist at the climax was another highlight.
Twist No.1 : Although some of the audience could predict what was going to happen after the instrumental extravaganza, a significant part of audience remained stunned especially when the remarkable character(Kalabhavan Mani) eventually died keeping the statue of the Saint beside him. Yes! Have you noticed the silence a few seconds after the instrumental climax? It's rather picturesque and bizarre chunk of clip at the same time. It was good way of representing as the breeze of calm air to the countryside up next.
Twist No.2 The metaphor of God as a representative of the new Bishop to be in charged. When the foreign girl realized whether it was a dream or illusion, I literally felt an experience resembling to Deja Vu at the denouement part especially when the new Bishop was rendering in front of the local store at the bay of the lake that has already been shown before at the arrival of the same Bishop.
Evidently the movie "Amen" is subjecting magical realism into theistic objectives, Optimistically it's been blended smoothly with the mesmerizing sitcoms. Music was innovative, the first song uses minimal instruments while the ending is embellished with a lot of instruments. I'd say music would be a mediocre attempt.
Now I'm more anticipated and looking forward to watch phenomenal extravaganzas like this in Malayalam as well as Indian movies. In short I'm absolutely convinced by what a new generation film looks like. NEW GENERATION film is not just an blurred imitation of modern life in hallucinations of drugs or sexual euphoria as a dignity or an extraordinary love story of an ordinary nerd.
PS: The peculiar cinematographic style reflected in this film was adopted from a french movie "Amelie(2001)". So is style of narration. Having said that assertion I might have watched it for 5 times. Obviously I have to emphasize that Amen can be recommended as a typical example of a NEW GENERATION movie. Once again thanks to the entire team of Amen in this regard.